


Half an Eye on the Sky

by thegreatpumpkin



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 20:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5063386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreatpumpkin/pseuds/thegreatpumpkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim always kept half an eye on the sky. He blamed his longing to fly, and so did Sarah; but the reason wasn’t that simple. (When his father came back, it would be from the sky.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half an Eye on the Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilpocketninja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilpocketninja/gifts).



Any time there had been a party, a holiday, a gathering of any sort in his childhood, Jim had half an eye on the sky. He blamed his longing to fly, and so did Sarah; but the reason wasn’t that simple.

Or rather, it was simple, in a different direction.

When his father came back (later, it became _if_ his father came back), it would be from the sky. And wouldn’t it be at some important time? Jim’s birthday, maybe, or Sarah’s. The Solar Day party. The year the inn made enough for the roof to be replaced. _Any_ occasion would have been a good time.

Sometime around the age of thirteen it stopped even being _if,_ but by then it was ingrained habit. After his first time out in the Etherium, he started making the effort _not_ to look, but he still caught himself doing it from time to time. That was why, on the day of his graduation from the Interstellar Academy, he saw the ship coming in.

There were any number of ships coming in, of course, for the ceremony. It could have been nothing. But there was something very...unremarkable about this ship. It was small, and could probably go quite fast with a competent pilot, but there was nothing about it that stood out particularly. Jim wasn’t certain why it even caught his attention; it wasn’t anything like the ship his father left on all those years ago (not that he was looking for that one anymore. Leland was gone, and Jim wouldn’t have wanted him here even if he weren’t.) His eyes only lingered for a moment; then there were more interesting things to give his attention to, like the captain of the _R.L.S. Legacy_ , who was striding purposefully across the campus with her husband in tow.

“Mister Hawkins!” she said jubilantly, shaking his hand in her no-nonsense way. “I am _delighted_ to hear that you haven’t embarrassed me or salted the earth for my future recommendations to the Academy.” And then, pulling him into a hug and lowering her voice to seriousness, “Very well done, Jim.”

Amelia stepped aside to make way for Dr. Doppler—Dr. _Smollett-_ Doppler, Jim was always forgetting. Delbert was getting better with touch since the children, and he was hardly awkward at all as he squeezed Jim’s shoulders. “What a fine day! Your mother is so proud, Jim. I knew you would get past that troublesome phase, I always said so, and young men generally do, you know—though of course that’s a generalization, some don’t, and there was that _terrible_ incident on Keppler 4—but never mind, the point is, just look at you! I remember when you were just beginning to—”

“Tell him congratulations, dear,” Amelia prompted, with a fairly convincing facsimile of patience, then began steering him away. “We’ll see you after all the fuss, Jim. Delbert will want to catch up with your mother, and I’ve got something of a business proposition for you.”

Jim nodded and waved, feeling a thrill of anticipation as he contemplated _something of a business proposition_. He could think of a thousand things he wanted to do after the academy, but they all boiled down to the same thing: sailing the Etherium, in whatever way possible. If it was a job that was on offer, well—what better way to start a savings for his own ship than serving under Captain Amelia?

In a few minutes they would start herding the graduating cadets into the immense courtyard where the ceremony would be held; parents and assorted coteries were already filling the seating. But for now, Jim was between actions, waiting at rest for the next direction. Maybe it was that relaxed, ready attention that made him more aware than usual.

Suddenly, he felt certain he was being watched.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. A subtle glance around yielded nothing suspicious, but Jim didn’t think he was wrong. He reached into his breast pocket, where Morph frequently liked to lay low in the guise of a pocket-watch, but it was empty. Not unusual—Morph had a tendency to float off at random, turning up again in a few minutes or a few hours. Still, he would have appreciated the extra pair of eyes.

Then things were starting, and he forgot about the feeling; they’d managed to drill just enough discipline into him by now that forming an orderly line was something of a comfort, a reassuring distraction. The ceremony was long and boring; the uniforms were stifling and stiff in the late-morning heat. Jim began to drift off more than once, despite his best efforts.

At long last it was over. He searched for his mother in the crowd, and when he finally found her, his heart stopped a moment.

She was talking to someone. The man’s back was towards him, but he was roughly Jim’s height, with short, sandy-brown hair. Sarah’s expression was guarded—not hostile, but the sort of look she got when she didn’t entirely believe the story she was hearing. Jim was barely aware his feet had taken him there until his mother looked up, breaking into a bright smile and opening her arms. “There’s my boy.”

The man turned, and he was a stranger. Once she was done hugging the breath out of him, Sarah introduced him—another ship’s captain, looking to hire—but Jim forgot the man’s name immediately, even as he stumbled distractedly through the appropriate pleasantries.

_What was I expecting? For Dad to turn up out of the blue, like he would suddenly start caring now?_ Jim wasn’t even sure if he was feeling disappointment or something else. He didn’t _want_ Leland here, not now. His father—or, well, the man who fathered him, anyway—didn’t _deserve_ any part of today. He was as much a stranger as the man whose hand Jim had just shaken. It was just habit, old habit, from when he’d been a kid and not known any better. From back when he thought being _good_ enough would somehow pull a real father out of Leland, and pull Leland out of the Etherium back to Montressor.

He tried to let it roll off of him. He was good enough; Leland wasn’t.

He smiled and shook hands, accepted and gave congratulations; looped his arm through his mother’s and let her pride buoy him up. This day was hers as much as it was his, given how much he’d put her through on the way to it.

By the meeting and greeting was done, and plans had been made to meet Amelia and Delbert for supper, Morph still hadn’t turned up. Jim was beginning to be a little concerned. He’d be going back to the Benbow tonight, and he wasn’t going to leave without Morph.

“I’m sure he’s okay,” he told Sarah, leaving her with one of the other cadet-moms she’d grown friendly with. “He probably just got stuck in something. Or distracted. It happens.”

He checked through his dormitory, which seemed eerily empty now that everyone’s belongings were neatly packed or already moved out. No sign of Morph there, or in the courtyard with the fountain where they spent a lot of free time, or in the mess hall where Morph liked to imitate some of the more exotic dishes and then run away from the cooks. Not at the academy dock, either.

Jim was at a bit of a loss. He checked through his packed things one last time, nearly giving up in despair until his whistle suddenly giggled. He sighed in fond exasperation. “That was a really good one, Morph, I couldn’t tell at all. But could you maybe hide at a more convenient time?”

The answer to that, of course, was always _no_. Morph flowed up into his usual form, then streaked off, wanting to play. Jim tried to call him back, to no avail. The only way to get him to behave was to play back a little.

They tore through the dormitory corridor, flying out the back exit and into the sparse woods that had been carefully cultivated around the academy to separate it from the city proper. Morph disappeared again, but his cheerful chittering was easy to follow into a copse of evergreens; Jim burst through into the space between them a few seconds behind him, laughing, and nearly took the figure waiting there off his feet when they collided.

Well, _foot_.

“Good to see you, Jimbo,” Silver said softly, setting him back to rights even as he caught his own balance with the metal leg.

Morph trilled happily, as if waiting for Jim to praise him for his find. Jim didn’t say anything.

“You’ve shot up,” Silver offered tentatively, like holding out food to a wild bird. “Look at you, lad, near as tall as I am, now.” It wasn’t true—Jim was taller than he had been, of course, but he was still only eye-to-chin with Silver.

Something twisted behind his ribcage. He opened his mouth, confused, unsure what he even intended to say. What came out, flat and unwelcoming, was: “What are you doing here?”

Silver looked as if he’d been half-expecting that. He dropped one shoulder and smiled in that self-deprecating way he was good at ( _just the humble ship’s cook, me_ ). “Well, I could hardly miss it. Not every day your boy graduates from the Imperial Academy, is it?”

Morph insinuated himself between Jim’s fingers, sensing his emotional turmoil, and Jim squeezed him gently for reassurance. “ _Your_ boy?”

Silver’s mouth quirked, a little ruefully, and he shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “As near as I’ve got, anyway. No one else has ever done me as kind a turn.” He paused, then leaned in a little, until Jim met his eyes. “Nor made me as proud, Jim me lad. Didn’t I say you had the makings of greatness in you?”

Jim folded into himself, suddenly fifteen again and desperate for someone to tell him he wasn’t just a spacer and an inn-keeper’s mistake, that despite the evidence of his own history he had some sort of value. He hadn’t really spent much time sorting through the emotions of that trip after it had been over; too many things had happened as a result, big important things with emotions of their own, and so he’d let it stay preserved in his memory, unexplored.

There was too much to say, and he didn’t have words for any of it. “You shouldn’t be here,” he choked out instead. “You’re still wanted—Captain Amelia knows you on sight—” He took half a step towards Silver, his arms nearly reaching out before he realized what he was doing and halted. He was a grown man, now. Hugging his mother was one thing, but embracing a pirate who had once said some kind words to him was another entirely.

Silver could read the struggle in his body language easily enough, and saved him the trouble by pulling him into a rib-cracking hug, his great paw of a hand patting Jim’s back. “Easy there, lad. This old cyborg has a few tricks up his sleeve, still. You don’t have to worry about me.”

The tension went out of Jim like water out of a shattered vase. He leaned against Silver for a long moment, his breath hitching though he managed to blink away the tears that briefly threatened; Morph floated up to tuck himself beneath Jim’s chin, fitting into the space between them.

“It’s all right, lad,” Silver murmured, an echo of the time before. “You’ve done us all proud.”

Jim finally collected himself, and drew back, but there was some ease between them again, some shadow of the old warmth from those bright weeks in the Etherium when they had taken out the longboat. Before all the mutineering and double-crossing and death-defying escapes.

“I wish—I wish we had a chance to sail together again,” he said, because it was less soft than _I forgive you._

“Now, Jimbo,” Silver said, letting him go, “Funny you should mention that. I imagine you’ll have your pick of ships to join now—not least our former vessel. And I can’t offer you that kind of respectability—or legality, as it happens.”

Jim felt as if the world were reshaping itself, in a small but definitive way. He had already been surrounded by open doors, but now there was a little alley that led off into the darkness, who-knew-where.

“On the other hand,” Silver went on, “you’ve always seemed to me like a lad that didn’t settle for the sure bet. And what I can offer you, Jim, is the sky. Every bit of it.”

Amelia would be disappointed. His mother wouldn’t understand—he’d have to come up with some sort of story anyway, a yarn about some boring but legal ship he’d signed on with, or else he’d be under house arrest and Silver would be bound for the Imperial prisons before you could say _jellyworm_.

But Silver was right—he’d always had half an eye on the sky. And the old cyborg could offer more than that, at any rate.

What Jim wanted, even more than the sky, was someone who would show it to him.


End file.
